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New York - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday signed
into law one of the nation's toughest gun-control measures and the first to be
enacted since the mass shooting last month at an elementary school in neighbouring
Connecticut.

The bill passed the Democratic-led Assembly on Tuesday
afternoon, a day after sprinting through the Republican-majority Senate. State
lawmakers have been in session for just a matter of days.

New York's legislation comes just a day before President
Barack Obama is expected to propose a national assault weapons ban and improved
background checks as part of a sweeping package of initiatives to curb gun
violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

Twenty 6- and 7-year-old schoolchildren and six educators
were killed in the Dec. 14 attack, when a man burst into their school in
Newtown, about 112km northeast of New York City, and opened fire with a
semi-automatic weapon.

The Sandy Hook shooting plunged the nation into grief and
reignited the gun-control debate.

Cuomo acted swiftly following that attack and another 10
days later in Webster, New York, a suburb of Rochester, that claimed the lives
of two volunteer fire-fighters. The new law mandates a life sentence without
parole for anyone who murders a first responder, the so-called "Webster
Provision".

With some provisions due to take effect immediately, the
legislation expands the state's ban on assault weapons, puts limits on
ammunition capacity and has new measures to keep guns out of the hands of the
mentally ill.

"People who are mentally ill should not have access to
guns, that's common sense," Cuomo said at a signing ceremony in Albany.
"That's probably the hallmark of this bill, coming up with a system that allows
for mental-health screens."

Gun control schemes

The measure limits magazine capacity to no more than seven
cartridges - the current limit is 10 cartridges - and requires a statewide
re-registration of all handguns and grandfathered assault weapons.

"Seven bullets in a gun, why? Because the high-capacity
magazines that give you the capacity to kill a large number of human beings in
a very short period of time is nonsensical to a civil society," Cuomo
said.

Police have said the gunman in Newtown, 20-year-old Adam
Lanza, carried numerous high-capacity magazines and that he changed gun clips
several times, allowing him to unleash at least 150 rounds in his 10-minute
assault.

Gun rights advocates lashed out at Cuomo and New York's law,
decrying the speed at which the legislation moved through the statehouse.

"The National Rifle Association and our New York
members are outraged at the draconian gun control bill that was rushed through
the process late on Monday evening," the NRA, the nation's most powerful
gun rights lobby group, said in a statement.

"These gun control schemes have failed in the past and
will have no impact on public safety and crime," the NRA said.

Also on Tuesday in Danbury, Connecticut, not far from
Newtown, gun control advocates gathered for a rally outside a Walmart store to
demand Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the nation's largest gun retailer, stop selling
assault weapons.

Among those at the rally were Lori Haas, whose daughter was
injured in the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, and Pam Simon, who was wounded
in the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, that also critically injured former
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Stronger background checks

The killings in Newtown, a rural New England town of 27 000,
shocked the country and prompted Obama to form a task force headed by Vice
President Joe Biden to find ways to curb gun violence. Obama is scheduled to
unveil the recommendations on Wednesday.

Opponents of the New York legislation argued it would not
prevent an attack like Newtown from occurring in New York and also would not
bring down the state's homicide rate because so few murders are committed with
rifles of any kind.

Assemblyman Raymond Walter, a Republican from upstate New
York, said New York's violent crime statistics show the state has a murder rate
of just four people per 100 000, but "rifles account for .03 of
that."

Were comparable legislation in place in Connecticut,
"it would not have stopped that horrible and tragic crime", said
Assemblyman Joseph Saladino, a Republican from Long Island.

The new legislation would also increase monitoring of
high-volume ammunition purchases, in-person or over the Internet, and current
owners of assault weapons would be required to register them, as is required
with handguns.

This week, officials in Maryland and Delaware also vowed to
press for their own state legislation to tighten bans on assault weapons and
high-capacity magazines.

Included in the New York law is an exemption allowing gun
permit holders to opt to have their identities kept private, a measure that
comes after the White Plains, New York-based Journal News published the names
of thousands of local license-holders.

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